Holes Cannot Be Counted as Immaterial Objects

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the theory that holes are immaterial objects faces an objection that has traditionally been thought to be the principal difficulty with its main rival, which construes holes as material parts of material objects. Consequently, one of the principal advantages of identifying holes with immaterial objects is illusory: its apparent ease of accounting for truths about number of holes. I argue that in spite of this we should not think of holes as material parts of material objects. This is because the theory that holes are properties does not face the same difficulties as either of these theories that construe holes as objects of some sort.

Argle victorious: a theory of holes as hole-linings

“…It is worth noting a couple different benefits of such a theory, in addition to that discussed in the introduction. The first I have already noted: the view is straightforwardly consistent with materialist nominalism in a way that, say, Casati and Varzi's theory of holes as immaterial bodies, or Meadows' theory of holes as properties, is not [Casati and Varzi, 1997] [Meadows, 2015. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the benefits of such an account accrue only to materialists and nominalists.…”

“…In their [Lewis and Lewis, 1970], David and Stephanie Lewis offered an account of the metaphysics of holes, and in so doing inaugurated a small but thriving literature on the topic (see e.g. [Meadows, 2015] [McDaniel, 2010). Posterity has been less kind, however, to the substantive view offered in the paper, placed in the mouth of the fictional interlocutor Argle, according to which a hole is nothing over and above its lining, the film of matter surrounding it.…”

“…Posterity has been less kind, however, to the substantive view offered in the paper, placed in the mouth of the fictional interlocutor Argle, according to which a hole is nothing over and above its lining, the film of matter surrounding it. A consensus has emerged that Casati and Varzi, in their [Casati and Varzi, 1997], have dealt fatal blows to the holes/hole-linings identity thesis, and that we correspondingly must look elsewhere for a proper analysis (see [Wake et al, 2007] [ Meadows, 2015] and of course [Casati and Varzi, 1997] itself). I argue that this consensus is misguided: both the main arguments that Casati and Varzi offer explicitly and stronger arguments to which they point the way can, I contend, be accommodated by a theorist who takes holes to be mere hole-linings.…”

“…Even if we reject nominalistic materialism, our basis for this rejection should not be something so apparently near to the concrete and material as the holes of material bodies. The more broadly popular views of holes in the literature-according to which they are immaterial bodies [Casati and Varzi, 1997], spatiotemporal regions [Wake et al, 2007], or properties [Meadows, 2013] [Meadows, 2015]-sit uncomfortably with this intuition. On a broadly Argelian view, to the contrary, holes are every bit as much a part of the concrete material order as they seem, since they themselves are just material concreta of a specific sort.…”